Are you feeling the Push and Pull of Life…as if you were a piece of paper stuck in the back of a file cabinet? When the door is open you can see the light, then the door gets slammed shut again. You wonder, how do I put myself back where I belong? What do I WANT from my day?
In this Perspectives Podcast, Sue West, AD/HD and Life Management Coach, and I bring forth the important question of what you might really WANT from your days- a precursor before we discuss HOW to get it.
Read on or listen by clicking: WANT-What do you Want from your Days
Barbara Sher said, “I could do anything if I just knew what it was.” And that is the title of one of her wonderfully written books. So do you know what it is you would want to do? That’s the first step, isn’t it?
So, the question (or questions) is, then, What do you WANT more of? Taking a step back, we have arrived at the WANT in the W+W+W+H = Woo Hoo! process. We’ve talked about What gets in your way, Why you want to design your day differently, and now we are hitting WANT. What do you Want from your day?
By focusing on what you WANT, it becomes easier to eliminate what you do NOT want. I’m providing the first example and Sue explains the second.
Here’s the first example:
Perhaps you WANT more time. This is a common reason people come to Design Your Days. Well, we all KNOW that there are only 24 hours in every day, period. So how can we “make” more time? We can’t. We can, however, choose what we do with each precious minute in a very conscious manner.
One of my clients wants more time so that she “feels less rushed and more balanced”. One first step in determining how to help her choose her activities in “making more time” is to take an inventory. What is she spending her time on now? Are those activities adding to her goals and/or life satisfaction, or are they draining it? You, the listener, can do this. Try this exercise with every activity you begin for one week. Ask, will this energize me or drain me?
ELIMINATING activities that are low value yields much time, if time is what you want MORE of.
Here’s Our Second example, from Sue:
“I want to spend more time on my business, because ultimately, my goal is to leave my legacy in the business I have built, not just to sell it, but because of the skills and leadership I’ve taught people who have worked with me, and because of the products and services we have provided. These things live on after us.”
And I also might hear from the same person: “I want more time with my grown children or with my grandchildren.” And “I want a less cluttered office space. The clutter holds me back from beginning my next chapter.”
So here, you might look at a typical week’s calendar and list of what you did, and simply guesstimate how much time you spent:
- working on the business and not in it;
- with adult children and/or grandchildren;
- and on dealing with clutter (lost items, doing things twice).
How does this feel to you: is it enough, too much or just right for each of these important areas you’ve identified? You’ll need this to know where you are now, to know how much you need to shift your time. Without a starting point, how will you know you’ve arrived? Second question: what might be a “good enough” number of hours for the week or maybe even the month, for each of these areas? How much is “enough time” for you to feel that you’re getting closer to your goal? Remember that goals begin with smaller steps.
Want More?
If these struck a chord with you, we know you’ll get much more benefit from our Design Your Days workshop. Our next public workshop is coming right up- on Tuesday March 18 from 9 to 11 am at the Academy of Design and Decorating in Peterborough, NH. Register here. Or you can check our Facebook page, Design Your Days, which will point you in the right direction.
In the next podcast we dig deeper into the WANT question. What do you want more of, or less of? Be sure to listen and see how to get both of these! We will continue to move through the Design Your Days process. At the end of about 12 podcasts, you will look back and find that we’ve provided an excellent overview of our process.